Nea Fane – Un Biet Român Pripășit în America / A Hapless Romanian Stuck in The US

For more than sixty years, Nea Fane has been tripping through life with his awkward little steps, just wandering along those wild paths that like to throw him a curveball.

He spent 33 years living under a communist regime that turned into a dictatorship, quietly chuckling at the ridiculousness of the leaders, sharing those off-the-wall political jokes, dodging parades, and almost signing up with the Communist Party (avoided due to the bloody revolution of ’89!). Just like any true Romanian, he grumbled about Ceaușescu when no one was listening, pretended to cheer like crazy, and slipped bribes left and right just to get the simplest things done.

He survived the great earthquake of 1977, the smaller one in the eighties, the ’89 Revolution, and the “Miners’ Festivals,” more popularly known as the Mineriads. He sympathized with the “Golani” (a term used by Iliescu, the infamous communist who stole the Revolution, to refer to the protestors). Nea Fane was in University Square, and on June 14th, 1990, he watched from afar the miners who were “planting flowers,” which was their euphemism for beating to death the students and other peaceful protesters.

He stayed like an idiot in Romania until 1996, hoping that if “the others” came to power, something good would happen. When he finally realized that nothing was happening and that “the others” were just “the same, with a different coat of paint” he packed his bags and left for America. At the end of January 1997, Nea Fane arrived in New York with his family, six suitcases, and twenty dollars in his pocket.

Two months, two hundred resumes, ten interviews, and eight tests later, Nea Fane got his first job on American soil, in Downtown Manhattan, two steps from Wall Street. Being a responsible immigrant, he worked until he almost dropped dead, paying little attention to the temptations surrounding him. For reasons he will never be able to explain, Nea Fane went back to college and obtained a perfectly useless Master’s in Computer Science.

September 11, 2001, found him at home, ready to leave for school. Where Nea Fane was is less important; more important is that his Lady was already at work, about 50 meters from the World Trade Center, with a view of the towers. When she realized that those “things” falling were actually people jumping, she left the building where she worked, leading her team away, and she didn’t stop walking for six hours.

Nea Fane got through all the epic Northeastern snowstorms, the Great New York Blackout of 2003, remained immune to the anthrax scares, almost peed his pants in fear during the electric transformer explosion in July 2002 when he descended 35 floors almost in free fall, watched in awe as the Staten Island ferry boat crashed in 2003 (missed it by a few minutes), and in 2004 left the most wonderful city in the world, going to where even the devil thinks is too hot, meaning Arizona…

He was thrown into depression by the death of his beloved mother in 2007, and he was almost brought to his knees by the financial crisis of 2008. His brain started locking up bad memories in little drawers.
A brutal foreclosure at the same time his Dad was fighting cancer (overseas), followed shortly by the death of his father shook him to the core, but he survived and kept pushing through – for his beloved son.

Quick Summary

He survived: earthquakes, communism, one overseas move, one terrorist attack, anthrax, blackouts, explosions, one ferry boat crash, one cross country move, one foreclosure, two friendship breakups, and the death of his parents.

2022, November

His son went to meet his grandparents. Nea Fane was sure he cannot survive this crushing loss, yet he did. Thanks to his friends, his writing (!), and… his dogs. The kind of friends who, when shown the door, come back through the window, not letting you out of their sight.

One step at a time, one day at a time became his new mantra.

Suddenly, in comparison, all the previous “happenings” weren’t so important anymore. The number of little boxes locked in his memory grew exponentially, to the point that he didn’t know what was reality and what was memory. But he kept pushing through, life and work, altogether, until…

… September, 2025

When he was let go from his job of 25 years. The last drop in a bucket filled to the brim with crap.

And now, for the first time in his life, he is scared: will he be able to survive this last challenge life threw at him?

Will he manage, at the age of 62, to navigate life in what was once hailed as the greatest democracy in the world, now a twisted autocracy and kakistocracy, employing the same audacious tactics he relied on during his first 33 years?

Will he…?